Dem Oscars

I have no particular opinions or rooting interest in the Academy Award nominations that were announced yesterday. But every year, I feel compelled to remind y'all that you can't read much into such things other than that in category, certain numbers of unidentified people cast more votes for some choices than others. You have no idea how many votes anyone got and that person you think got "snubbed" may have missed a nomination by one vote or many. And you have no idea if the folks who didn't vote for him or her even saw the film in question.

I saw several people write that since Julie Andrews won for Best Actress in the original Mary Poppins and Emily Blunt wasn't nominated for the sequel, the Academy was saying that Julie was a better Mary than Emily. I think she was but the voters didn't say any such thing. It said that in 1964, more of the people voting that year thought Ms. Andrews gave the best performance that year, as opposed to the different set of voters this year who preferred at least five other performances this year to Ms. Blunt's. Emily was competing with a different group of voters against different competition.

She was probably also competing with The Black Panther in the category of where Disney would spend its bucks to secure Oscar nominations.

And the thing to remember about "snubbed" is that the Academy has an arbitrary number of nominations in each category. In a year when there are three outstanding performances by Actors in Supporting Roles, they nominate five. And in a year when there are nine outstanding performances by Actors in Supporting Roles, they nominate five…and everyone says that four guys got "snubbed."

And some or all of those four guys might have secured Academy Award Nominations if — and they themselves have no control of this — the films they were in had been released a few weeks earlier or a few weeks later so they'd qualified in a different year. It's not just what you do in a movie, it's when that movie opens.